37

  THROWING DOWN, MMA-STYLE

  PROSECUTORS CALLED JONATHAN GOOD as a witness only because they had to. If the State had not called him, the defense surely would have. Good was Witness #6, a thirtyish college graduate who worked in finance, the man whose testimony the State knew from the beginning would subvert its case. Good lived in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. On the night of February 26, 2012, the altercation between Zimmerman and Martin ended up right on his doorstep. He was the only witness who had an outside light on. His testimony was worth more than all the other witnesses’ combined.1 Several other eyewitnesses had already testified, as artfully steered by the defense, that Good was the only eyewitness to step outside and address the combatants.

  Of all the witnesses Good was also the most succinct and coherent. He kept his testimony clinical and dispassionate. He betrayed no obvious sympathy for Zimmerman or Martin. He answered de la Rionda’s perfunctory questions—“Can you recall what [TV] program you were watching?”—as though they mattered. If it were not for the content, the observer would have thought him an excellent witness for the prosecution. Yet, as would prove true with many of the State’s witnesses, the longer Good remained on the witness stand, the more problems he created for the prosecution. Observed Andrew Branca in Legal Insurrection, “The testimony of State witness Jonathan Good was remarkably, almost shockingly, destructive to the State’s theory of the case.”2

  In his cross-examination, O’Mara raised one issue with Good that most trial observers overlooked: Martin had no apparent intention of stopping his assault on Zimmerman. In response to a question from O’Mara, Good recalled that he had said to the pair, “What’s going on? Cut it out. Stop.” O’Mara then asked, “[Martin] kept on doing what he was doing?” Again, without obvious emotion, Good affirmed that he had. The implication was that if Good’s threat to call 9-1-1 could not slow Martin down, nothing Zimmerman could say would stop him, nothing he could do, nothing, that is, save shooting him.

  Exploiting the rule of completeness, O’Mara took the opportunity to read back to Good what he told investigator Chris Serino immediately after the shooting: “So I open my door. It was a black man with a black hoodie on top of the other, either a white guy or now I found out I think it was a Hispanic guy with a red sweatshirt on the ground yelling out help! And I tried to tell them, get out of here, you know, stop or whatever, and then one guy on top in the black hoodie was pretty much just throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA-style.” To repeat, “MMA-style” means mixed martial arts. O’Mara continued:

  O’MARA:

  OK. And do you stand by that today, that what you saw was a Ground-and-Pound event?

  GOOD:

  It looked like that position was a Ground-and-Pound type of position, but I couldn’t tell 100 percent that there were actually fists hitting faces.

  O’MARA:

  But you did see [reading] “the guy in the top in the black hoodie pretty much just throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA-style.”

  GOOD:

  Meaning arm motions going down on the person on the bottom. Correct.

  In confirming the accuracy of his early statements, Good validated Zimmerman’s version of the event and established beyond any reasonable doubt that it was Zimmerman who was yelling out for help. The media had no excuse for not anticipating Good’s testimony. Good had talked to an Orlando TV station the day after the shooting. “The guy on bottom who I believe had a red sweater on was yelling to me, ‘Help, help,’” Good told the reporter. “I told them to stop and I was calling 911.” For reasons of their own, the media chose to keep alive the increasingly pointless debate as to who was the source of those screams.

  Guy and de la Rionda had first spoken to Good in March 2012, just days after they had taken over the case. With full indifference to prosecutorial ethics, the memorandum summarizing this interview stressed only the actions that Good did not hear or see. “When he opened the door, he only placed one foot onto the patio. He did not go all the way outside. He definitely did not go out onto the grass,” wrote T. C. O’Steen. “Good advised that during the struggle between the two guys, he never heard anything that sounded like a fist hitting another nor did he ever hear any sounds of someone’s head or other body part hitting the concrete hard.”3 In the early days at least, the prosecutors did not want to hear any facts that might have cleared Zimmerman. The media obliged them. At the trial, however, they and the media finally had to face the flimsiness of the case they had collectively sold America.

  38

  SCORING FOR THE OPPOSITION

  WHEN CAPTAIN ALEXIS CARTER, US Army judge advocate general, entered the courtroom on day eight of the trial, he gave Zimmerman supporters in the larger audience pause. Well dressed and good-looking, this African-American army officer had come to court as a witness for the prosecution. As he explained his credentials and his role as Zimmerman’s criminal justice teacher at Seminole State College, those watching had to sense that whatever he said about Zimmerman would have weight commensurate with his stature. Richard Mantei, the youthful, overeager third attorney on the prosecution team, walked Carter through his coursework for one particular purpose. Mantei wanted to establish that when Zimmerman told Sean Hannity in a televised interview that he had not known about Florida’s stand-your-ground law until after the shooting, he was lying. To make this point, Mantei asserted that Zimmerman was an A student, and Carter confirmed him to be “one of the better students in the class.”1

  Whatever good Carter did for the prosecution was undone by the time Don West finished introducing his client. “You see George over here?” said West as Zimmerman stood and nodded. Carter gave him a friendly wave. “How ya doing, George?” he said, eliciting in the process a shy smile out of the otherwise stone-faced defendant. In his opening statement Don West had said, “There are no monsters here.” With a wave and a smile, Captain Carter confirmed the truth of West’s contention.

  From that moment on, almost everything Carter said damaged the prosecution’s case. To the growing frustration of Mantei, Carter and West engaged in a good-natured discussion of Florida’s self-defense law that served ultimately to justify Zimmerman’s action on the night of February 26. LI’s Branca described it, in fact, as “a legal seminar for the jury.”2 Said West to Carter at one point, “I know you’re taking us to school,” but it was the cagy West who was taking the jury to school as he worked his way around prosecutorial objections and finessed Carter through the practical application of the law of self-defense.

  “You don’t have to wait until you’re almost dead before you can defend yourself?” West asked Carter at one point. “No, I would advise you probably don’t do that,” said Carter with enough good humor to cause the audience to laugh and Zimmerman to smile. When West opined that you never know for sure when that ultimate moment will be, Carter answered, “No, unfortunately, you don’t.”

  Carter was not the only prosecution witness to score what soccer fans call an “own goal,” meaning a goal for the other team. Others before him had done much the same, at least four of them consequentially. Among them was Sean Noffke, whose reasoned advice on George Zimmerman’s nonemergency call made him America’s most famous police dispatcher. Assistant state attorney John Guy had the congenial thirtysomething Noffke explain the mechanics of taking and responding to a call. In his subsequent questions Guy hoped to get Noffke to concede that Zimmerman had exceeded the role of a neighborhood watch coordinator and that he did so with something like vengeance, given that the “f**king punks” were always getting away.

  In addition, Guy planted the seed that after Zimmerman finished the call with the dispatcher, he set out to hunt Martin down. The suggestion was that by first agreeing to meet the police at the community mailboxes, then at his truck, and then just through phone contact, Zimmerman would have had the freedom to roam and stalk. But Guy recognized the weak point in his own line of attack and exposed it before the defense had the opportunity. In fact, Noffke did not order Zimmerman to cease following Martin because he lacked the authority to do so. He was not a police officer. And as a dispatcher, liability concerns prevented him from giving commands of any sort. He could only make suggestions. This essentially put a lie to the myth that Zimmerman had “disobeyed” the Sanford police.

  At the beginning of jury selection, an Associated Press (AP) reporter wrote, “Zimmerman called 911, got out of his vehicle and followed Martin behind the townhomes despite being told not to by a police dispatcher.”3 As Noffke’s testimony made clear, the AP made at least three errors in one sentence: Zimmerman called the nonemergency number, not 911; he exited the truck and started following Martin before the dispatcher said otherwise; finally, the dispatcher could not and did not tell Zimmerman to do anything. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, to his credit, conceded that Noffke absolved Zimmerman of disobeying a direct order. Ironically, however, in an article titled “Five Myths About . . . the killing of Trayvon Martin,” Capeheart perpetuated the myth that Zimmerman was still in his truck when Noffke suggested he not follow Martin.4

  This was not a minor oversight on Capehart’s part. As O’Mara drove the point home in cross-examination, Noffke may have inspired Zimmerman to maintain visual contact with Martin. O’Mara reviewed the critical moment on the dispatcher tape for Noffke and the jurors. After Zimmerman told Noffke that Martin was running, Noffke asked, “He’s running? Which way is he running?” It was just as this question was asked that Zimmerman started walking in haste. O’Mara then asked if Zimmerman might have taken his question as a suggestion to keep an eye on Martin. Said Noffke, “I understand how someone could have misinterpreted the intent of that.” Through O’Mara’s questioning, Noffke also undermined the State’s implication that Zimmerman was enraged and keen on vengeance.

  If anything, State witness Wendy Dorival, an African-American who served as volunteer program coordinator for the Sanford Police Department, proved even more helpful to Zimmerman’s cause. It was Dorival who worked with Zimmerman to launch the neighborhood watch program in his community. In calling her to the stand, the State had hoped that she would confirm the much-bruited notion that Zimmerman was an overzealous cop wannabe who disregarded the limits of his authority in “profiling” Martin and “following” him. It didn’t quite work out that way.

  On cross-examination by the defense, Dorival spoke repeatedly of the many burglaries in the community. She told specifically of how she had met with a female neighbor of Zimmerman’s who had endured a home invasion and was “still shaken up by it.” On the questions of gun ownership and concealed carry, Dorival remained fully agnostic. Those were not subjects she ever brought up at neighborhood watch meetings.

  Dorival spoke highly of Zimmerman throughout her testimony. “He seemed like he really wanted to make changes in his community, to make it better,” Dorival said. His professionalism and dedication to his community impressed her enough that she asked him to join the Sanford PD’s Citizens on Patrol program, a program that trained residents to patrol their neighborhoods. Zimmerman politely declined her offer. After the Sherman Ware incident a year earlier, Zimmerman had denounced the Sanford police for operating “in the gray” and the chief for his “illegal cover-up and corruption.” Neither jab endeared this alleged wannabe cop to the local constabulary.

  Just as importantly, Dorival repeated the point frequently that she and her colleagues “always encourage [neighborhood watch people] to call.” Asked West, “You err on the side of making the call?” Dorival answered yes. “When something about them doesn’t seem quite right?” asked West again, referring to people acting suspiciously. “Yes,” said Dorival. The neighborhood watch coordinator, she explained, is the “eyes and ears” of the community.

  On day six of the trial, the prosecution called Doris Singleton to the stand. She was the Sanford police officer who first interviewed Zimmerman in depth on the night of the shooting. For no apparent reason, de la Rionda played the interview in full. The jurors heard Singleton explain the Miranda rules and Zimmerman waive his right to an attorney. They also heard Zimmerman, always respectful, recount in chilling detail the savagery of Martin’s attack, his own cries for help, his fruitless appeal to a neighbor, and his quick submission to the police when they arrived.

  As Singleton explained, Zimmerman did not know that Martin was dead until she told him. He was dismayed. After noticing Singleton was wearing a cross, he questioned if she was Catholic. She asked why that might matter, and he responded, “In the Catholic religion, it’s always wrong to kill someone.” She responded, “If what you’re telling me is true, I don’t think that what God meant was that you couldn’t save your own life.” If the prosecutors had hoped that Singleton would paint Zimmerman as a person of depraved mind who killed Martin out of ill will, spite, or hatred, she did not at all oblige them. In fact, as the replay of the interview showed, she had offered him something like a spiritual acquittal.

  The Sanford PD’s lead investigator on the Zimmerman case, Chris Serino, followed Singleton to the stand. Of all the officers who testified, none undermined the prosecution’s line of attack more substantially than he did. Serino had a score to settle. An ever-tightening vise of political pressure had badly damaged his law enforcement career. He told the FBI early on that three Sanford police officers—two of them black, the third married to an African-American—pressured him to file charges against Zimmerman almost immediately after the incident. He refused to do so without probable cause. Serino implied that these officers were also leaking information about the case, and those leaks were fueling the growing firestorm.

  Sanford police chief Bill Lee resisted the storm as long as he was able, telling a crowd of reporters and black activists outside Sanford City Hall, “Mr. Zimmerman has made the argument of self-defense. Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that we don’t have the grounds to arrest him.” Serino told the FBI the same thing, namely that he “did not believe he had enough evidence at the time to file charges.”5 The only new “evidence” to emerge after the pressure mounted was the concocted testimony of Rachel Jeantel. That testimony proved sufficient, however, for the State to arrest Zimmerman and put Serino on the stand to testify, presumably against the beleaguered neighborhood watch coordinator.

  Those who knew the history of this gruff, tough-looking cop sensed that he would rather have been a thousand other places than a Seminole County courtroom on the first day of July 2012. Still, despite the pressure, he stuck to the facts. Usually, the lead investigator is the one who nails the coffin shut in a murder trial. Serino, however, spent much of his time on the witness stand prying the nails loose. As he told the jury, with a little helpful prodding by O’Mara, Zimmerman never failed to cooperate fully with the police during several weeks of interviews. Those interviews were part of an investigation that eventually involved several people within the Sanford PD, including the chief, as well as others from the local state attorney’s office. When O’Mara asked Serino if Zimmerman had said anything to contradict the diverse evidence he had gathered, Serino firmly answered, “No, sir.”

  O’Mara then asked Serino to explain the details of what is often called the “challenge interview,” an intense cross-examination by investigators of a suspect to try to reveal any false testimony in the Zimmerman case, this interview took place three days after the shooting. In a challenge interview, the police officer occasionally bluffs about evidence that he may not have. As O’Mara explained, Serino did just that, telling Zimmerman that one of Martin’s hobbies was videotaping “everything he does.” As a result, claimed Serino, Martin had a “very impressive” library of images trapped in his phone. O’Mara played the recording of a crucial exchange in that interview. The jurors heard Serino saying, “There’s a possibility that whatever happened between you and him is caught on videotape” and Zimmerman replying, “I prayed to God that someone videotaped it.” At the time, of course, Zimmerman did not know Serino was bluffing.

  Much to the prosecutors’ chagrin, Serino told the court that he could find no reason to doubt George Zimmerman’s account of what transpired that fateful night in February. “Do you think George Zimmerman was telling you the truth?” O’Mara asked him. “Yes,” admitted Serino as the Monday afternoon session wrapped up. So compelling was this admission that the Tuesday proceedings began with the prosecution demanding that it be stricken from the record. It was, but as TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt observed, “You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.”6 Juror B37 confirmed as much. Two nights after the jury returned its verdict, she told Anderson Cooper that Serino’s testimony “made a big impression on me.” When Cooper asked why, she answered, “He deals with, you know, murder, robberies; he’s in it all the time. And I think he has a knack to pick out who’s lying and who’s not lying.”7

  B37 spoke to Anderson artlessly and honestly before she understood the negative consequences of doing so. Her presentation was sensitive to the Martin family and, at the end, very emotional. It represents the most detailed and candid discussion of what went on in the jury room and will be treated as such from here on out.